Aces & Eights
Page 18
“Are you ready, dear?”
“As soon as Julian gets back with our new carriage,” replied Grace. “Have you read about the hanging? The paper’s over there.” She glanced in the mirror next to the door, checking to see if her freckles were effectively concealed by powder.
“Leave it for the movers,” said her mother. “Life is short enough without wasting time reading about other people’s deaths.”
A carriage rattled up outside.
Merchants Hotel,
Louisville, Kentucky,
February 25, 1877.
To the Marshal of Yankton:
Dear Sir:
I saw in the morning papers a piece about the sentence of the murderer of Wild Bill, Jack McCall. There was a young man of the name John McCall left here about six years ago, who has not been heard from for the last three years. He has a father, mother, and three sisters living here in Louisville, who are very uneasy about him since they heard about the murder of Wild Bill. If you can send us any information about him, we would be very thankful to you.
This John McCall is about twenty-five years old, has light hair, inclined to curl, and one eye crossed. I cannot say about his height, as he was not grown when he left here. Please write as soon as convenient, as we are very anxious to hear from you.
Very respectfully,
Mary A. McCall.
Marshal Burdick, who had found the letter on his desk upon his return from the Catholic cemetery, where he had been busy chasing souvenir hunters from Jack McCall’s day-old grave, started to crumple the letter preparatory to hurling it into his wastebasket, then thought better of it, smoothed it out, and placed it in his top drawer. It was part of the legend.
Epilogue
DEAD MAN’S RAFFLE
The Black Hills shimmer in the summer heat, nervous fingers twitching and stirring with Deadwood cupped in them like a bad hand of poker. They are not black at all except from a distance, but blue and green and purple, and from the streams that flow down their slopes lived the Cheyenne and then the Sioux, who venerated the low, rolling mountains as a sacred place where spirits dwelled. Now white men pan gold from those streams and strip the color from the hills to reveal the naked black soil beneath, justifying the name they gave them.
On a hillside overlooking the town, a mound of fresh earth lies at the foot of a broad tree stump, in the bark of which is cut a crude legend:
A brave man, the victim of an
assassin, J. B. Hickok (Wild
Bill) age 48 years; murdered by
Jack McCall, Aug. 2, 1876
In death as in life, Hickok’s existence is shrouded in uncertainty, for the anonymous carver has incorrectly advanced his age nine years. There are fresh flowers on the grave, which some attirbute to Calamity Jane Canary, a female hell raiser whose reputation has taken a sharp upward swing since the pistoleer’s death. Some say they were secretly married. Others maintain that it was a secret even to Hickok. But the legend that Calamity Jane chased the fleeing McCall around a butcher’s shop with a cleaver following Wild Bill’s murder will continue long after her death in a new century. By her own request, she will be buried within twenty feet of Hickok’s grave.
This is not, however, his final resting place. On August 3, 1879, old friends J. S. McClintock, Charlie Utter, and Lewis Schoenfield will disinter the remains for burial in Mount Moriah Cemetery. They will find that the combination of minerals in the earth has resulted in a natural embalming, and that three years after his demise Hickok’s body will hold true to Doc Pierce’s description while preparing it for interment in 1876: “I have seen many dead men on the field of battle and in civil life, but Wild Bill was the prettiest corpse I have ever seen.” But for some shrinkage of the flesh, he will look as he did the day he played his last hand, with fingers like marble clutching the Sharps rifle with which he was buried. The righteous will say that the earth rejected him because of his wicked deeds.
With the move, a more impressive slab will be erected over the new site, reading:
WILD BILL
J. B. HICKOK
Killed by the Assassin
Jack McCall
Deadwood City
Black Hills
August 2, 1876
Pard, we will meet again in the happy
hunting grounds to part no more.
Good Bye
Colorado Charlie
Souvenir hunters will chip at the stone until nothing remains of the legend. In 1892 it will be replaced by a monument that will be destroyed, in turn, after which a steel fence will encircle the plot and a new stone.
Today there is no one at the grave. Most of Deadwood has gathered in front of the tent Hickok shared with Charlie Utter, where Wild Bill’s effects are being raffled off at twenty-five cents a chance to defray the expense of the funeral. Aside from a trail of fable that will swell and spread like the smoke from a passing locomotive, he has left little behind: A brown leather valise with the initials J. B. H. carved on the rolled handle; two broad-brimmed hats, one for working, one for show; one suit of fine quality, the jacket specially designed to swing open freely for swift access to a revolver; several blinding white linen shirts, intricately pleated; a beaded and fringed buckskin shirt; dusty work clothes; a black oilcloth slicker; a linen duster; red flannel underwear; two pairs of dress boots, one pair polished to a high black finish, the other of immaculate brushed buckskin; a red silk sash; a pair of leather work boots, scuffed and worn down at the heels; some ties; a gold watch; assorted prospecting equipment; guns. His pack animals belong to Utter and his corpse is wearing everything else.
Among the firearms are a sawed-off shotgun, three Navy Colts, two with ivory handles, a Deane-Adams English five-shot revolver, and matched derringers. There are also boxes of ammunition for all seven weapons, as well as for the Sharps in the coffin, and a bowie knife, well used.
The clothing goes first, and for the next few weeks the citizens of Deadwood will be treated to the spectacle of hardrock miners and half-breed Sioux parading around in fine linen and a Prince Albert designed for a larger frame. Budding entrepreneurs, blessed with greater foresight, will cut up the boots and buckskin shirt to make tobacco pouches and sell them for two dollars apiece on the strength of their original ownership. The gold watch will end up in the possession of an eastern railroad magnate, one of the hats will emerge many years later in a local miners’ museum, and the rest of the haberdashery will fall by the wayside, destroyed out of ignorance or indifference, or lost.
The ammunition, a scarce commodity out here where the only link with civilization is a single stage run to and from Bismarck, will be used up on Indians, claim jumpers, and faro dealers with an affinity for the bottom of the deck.
Of the fate of the firearms, little will be known save the following:
The shotgun will kill a bartender in Amarillo, Texas, and be lost in a fire in a boxcar belonging to a traveling Wild West show.
The plain-handled Colt will vanish without a trace.
The English revolver and one of the ivory-handled Colts will fall into the hands of private collectors and never be fired again.
The derringers will be lost to posterity, as will the bowie knife.
Only the remaining ivory-handled Colt, serial number 139345, with “Wild Bill” engraved on the butt, is destined to play a greater role in history, when Sheriff Pat Garrett uses it to bring an end to the career of New Mexico bandit William “Billy the Kid” Bonney in 1881. Thus will two of the most enduring legends of the old West be forever linked.
By LOREN D. ESTLEMAN FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
City of Widows
The High Rocks
Billy Gashade
Stamping Ground
The Murdock’s Law
Aces & Eights
Jitterbug
Journey of the Dead
Thunder City
White Desert
American West
Something Borrowed, Something Black
&n
bsp; Black Powder, White Smoke
The Master Executioner
Poison Blonde
Port Hazard
Retro
Little Black Dress
The Undertaker’s Wife
Nicotine Kiss
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion
American Detective*
Frames *
*Forthcoming
Praise for Journey of the Dead
“Estleman has no rival—not even Louis L’Amour—in evoking the American Southwest … . Hard-rubbed dialogue as bright as a new-minted Indian-head penny, … style to burn, talk that haunts. Deserves blue ribbons and rosettes.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Estleman’s Garrett is a convincingly tragic Western figure who never quite understands the praise and blame attached to him for an act he can never live down.”
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Billy Gashade
“Billy Gashade will certainly be included in all future discussions of the Western.”
—The Washington Post
“Loren D. Estleman delicately balances fact and fiction … . [It’s] at once a lively coming-of-age story and an annotated pastiche of American history.”
—The New York Times
“Estleman represents the high quality expected of contemporary historical fiction writers. Good storytelling alone is no longer accepted as the norm.”
—The Sterling Heights Source
“Picaresque novel … . A fast-paced, lively read.”
—School Library Journal
“Estleman skillfully intermingles real people and events with his fictional account, enhancing verisimilitude and making his hero a symbol of the growing nation, whose centennial year Gashade considers a turning point in his life.”
—Salem Press-Magill Book Reviews
More Praise for Loren D. Estleman
“A pithy, punchy writer who can also deliver the action.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Quicksilver dialogue, incisive characterizations, and canny interweaving of observations and events. Estleman’s eye, ear, and hand are in perfect sync.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“With a pro’s practiced skill, Estleman keeps all the plates spinning through the air with no apparent effort.”
—Boston Sunday Globe
“Estleman’s prose and ability to set a mood are always first-rate.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
POSTSCRIPT
Aces & Eights is not intended to be a factual account of the trial of Jack McCall, although parts of it are based on existing transcripts, and the particulars of Wild Bill Hickok’s life have been recorded faithfully. The characters of Julian Scout, T. S. E. Bartholomew, General John Quincy Adams Crandall, and Orville Gannon are fictional interpretations based on the actual attorneys of record on the McCall case. Others, notably Grace Sargent and her mother, Dora Hope, were spun from whole cloth. Federal Judge Blair and U.S. Marshal Burdick existed, presiding, respectively, at the trial and execution of Hickok’s killer.
With the exceptions of Buffalo Bill Cody and Ben Thompson, all of the witnesses herein presented gave testimony during the actual proceedings. It is the author’s contention that had these famous frontiersmen been available at the time, they would have been summoned.
The most important truth, which remains unaltered, is this: At 3:10 on the afternoon of August 2, 1876, Jack McCall shot and killed James Butler Hickok from behind while the latter was playing poker in Deadwood’s Saloon No. 10, and told authorities later that he had done so in return for monies promised him by John Varnes, whose partner was Tim Brady. The author hopes that readers will excuse him for enlarging upon historical fact in pursuit of his theme.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ACES & EIGHTS
Copyright © 1981 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429911757
First eBook Edition : March 2011
First Forge Edition: July 1998